Egypt became fastest growing tourist destination: UNWTO

Egypt is the fastest growing tourist destination, while France is the most visited country, the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) revealed in its annual report on global travel and tourism.

The report showed that Egypt received about 8.5 million tourists during 2017, with an increase in the number of tourists up to 55.1%, compared to the same period of the previous year.

Meanwhile, the UNWTO explained that the number of tourists in Egypt decreased in 2016, reaching 5.2 million in 2016, down from 14.7 million in 2017.

The report explained that this came as a result of the suspension of flights following the downing of a Russian charter jet and the turmoil following the uprising that toppled former President Hosni Mubarak.

According to the report, Egypt attracts tourists to the likes of Giza and Luxor, who come to discover the Great Pyramids and Sphinx.

Earlier in August, a government official told Reuters that Egypt’s tourism revenues jumped 77%in the first half of 2018 to amount to $4.8bn compared with the same period last year.

For his part, the former head of Egypt’s Federation of Tourism Chambers, Elhamy Al-Zayat told DNE that the indicators that showed that Egypt is the fastest growing destination are good, mentioning that it is a normal indicator due to the devastating blow that happened in 2016, hence when comparing the worst results of Egypt ever in tourism in 2016 to the results of this year, we will see that it is a great shift, but normal.

He explained that before the 2011 Revolution, in 2010 the tourism were growing fastest, but then after the 2011 Revolution the tourism suffered a lot, then it suffered the most in 2016, especially, when a Russian passenger plane crashed in Sinai in late October 2015 and all its passengers were killed.

Al-Zayatadded that this return happened without paying efforts, pointing out that American tourists returned, the tourists from France also returned.

He continued that in order to retrieve the number of the tourists as it was in 2010, the government has to launch a marketing campaign for promoting tourism in Egypt.

“We need more efforts in order to attract the tourists as we already cut a long shot in developing the hotels, the airports, in being safer if compared to the period after the revolution, thus the only lack is in promoting tourism,” he explained further.

Al-Zayat explained also that the touristic map of the tourists coming to Egypt has changed, stating that before the 2011 Revolution, the Russian tourism was ranked number one on the touristic map of Egypt followed by the British and German tourism.

On contrary, now the German tourists are ranked number one followed by the British tourists and then the Ukraine tourists, in terms of the number of tourists.

Notably, the Minister of Tourism Rania Al-Mashat said earlier that the number of tourists visiting Egypt jumped by 30% during the first quarter of 2018 compared to last year.